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May 19, 2014

Today we talk about "football", "fútbol" and "soccer".Depending on your country you call it one thing or another, but if you are reading this blogyou can then start calling it "Fußball".For me, as it is for all my European neighbors, "football" is the sport that is played with this ball:

Screen shot of the http://dictionary.cambridge.org/us - search for football

Football has been around since the 19th century and it is the most popular sport in the world... maybe not in the US and Australia, but it is in the rest of the world.And because it's so popular and it is played in over 200 countries across all continents, you can expect some language discrepancies (as we have already learnt):

it is calledfootball in English but soccer in the US and Australia

it is futebal in Brazil

it is fútbol in the Spanish-speaking countries

and it is Fußball in Germany

Confused? let me help you or let me send you to someone who can clear the confusion. Tony Manfred @ the Business Insider created an amazing worldwide mapshowing how each country on the globe calls football:

Screen shot of the BI article by Tony Manfred: http://www.businessinsider.com/football-vs-soccer-map-2013-12#!HTxI6

Got it? not yet? then let me then tell you that the sport of football started in Britain sometime in the 19th century and two centuries later Gary Lineker, a former and very successful English football player came out with the modern definition of the sport of football and with it... he went viral:

Football is a simple game: 22 men chase a ball for 90 minutes and at the end, the Germans always win (Gary Lineker)

Do you get the idea?

THE GERMAN FUSSBALL LEAGUE = THE BUNDESLIGAThe Bundesliga is the leading German national competition. It runs from August to May and it sells 18 million tickets annually. The Bundesliga is considered the number one trophy in the country and so every German team fights for it. In 2014 FC Munich won the Bundesliga.

On a second level, you have the DFB Competition: which stands for "Deutscher Fußball Bund". The DFB is the second most important competition in Germany and it happens every year after the Bundesliga. This year (2014) the FC Munich won the Cup.